


Asphodel and Broken Memories

by Epi_girl



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Angst, Death, Flowers, Language of Flowers, Multi, Poor Aaron Burr, Unhappy Ending, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2017-06-03
Packaged: 2018-11-08 13:11:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11082279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Epi_girl/pseuds/Epi_girl
Summary: His throat is raw and bleeding and he can never sleep at night. He's always coughing up petals and he wonders if the flowers finally killing him would really be such a bad thing.All because Alexander Hamilton doesn't love him back.





	Asphodel and Broken Memories

**Author's Note:**

> This is a Hanahaki fic. 
> 
> If you aren't aware of what that is, it's a fictional disease where if you love someone and they don't love you, you constantly cough up flower petals until they kill you. There isnt a cure.
> 
> Enjoy?

He meets Alexander on the streets of New York in 1776. He's young, painfully thin, with dark circles under his eyes and fire in his gaze. He says "Aaron Burr, sir!" with so much enthusiasm that he manages to make Aaron smile, a rare occurrence. He offers Hamilton advice (talk less, smile more), and buys him a drink.

That day Alexander becomes friends with John Laurens, Hercules Mulligan, and Lafayette, who has too many names to keep track of. Burr envies him, almost.

*

They keep meeting.

It happens again in Washingtons tent. And while it bothers him that the General so quickly accepts Hamilton and seems to harbour an almost unbiased anger towards him, he takes it in stride.

*

Hamilton is promoted.

Aaron pretends it doesn't hurt.

*

They grow closer, over time. Burr finds it harder and harder to hold Alexander at arms length when he seems so determined to break past the carefully constructed defences Aaron has spent years building up. And so they become closer, and closer, ever so slightly. A brush of the hand, a gaze that lingers a little too long, a quiet smile reserved only for the two of them.

*

And then one day, it stops.

It's at a ball in the dead of winter. He enters the room alongside Hamilton, Laurens, Lafayette, and Mulligan. And anyone would be a fool to miss the longing gaze that John shoots him, or the hungry looks that are directed towards him from the ladies of the party.

The group splits up, Laurens always hovering a short distance away from Alexander.

His heart sinks when the eldest Schuyler, the one who had rejected him before, leads Hamilton to her sister. The look in their eyes is starstruck, like they've found their other half.

*

Aaron wakes up that night, coughing.

When he looks down, an asphodel petal is nestled in his hand.

He whimpers.

*

Burr has heard of Hanahaki disease. He just never believed it to be true. But when he finds himself choking on the petals day after day, he can't help but question what he thought before.

And when he realizes that this is happening because he loves Alexander, it hurts. Because the petals that he can't stop coughing up indicate that Alexander doesn't love him back.

He researches the disease. There is no cure.

*

It gets worse.

As time goes on, the once pristine petals become bloodstained, maroon liquid staining the delicate things as they force their way out of him. And there are some times that he finds himself gagging because he can't get the asphodel to come out and they're blocking his throat and he thinks he might die, but then he wonders if that would really be such a bad thing.

Breathing becomes harder and he talks even less, voice too rough and throat too raw to even try.

What stings is that no one seems to notice.

*

He's sitting at the bar, staring down at his drink, which has blood-coated petals floating on the surface. Not an uncommon sight, now.

When he looks down the bar, there sits John Laurens, a sprig of baby's breath in his hand, the pale flowers decorated with droplets of blood.

He looks terrified. Burr can't blame him.

*

It's never an easy thing to watch love from afar, especially not when one of the two is someone you love.

It's especially hard when you have petals in your mouth to remind you that that person doesn't feel the same.

*

Burr isn't angry at Alexander, nor Eliza. Quite the opposite. He's happy for the both of them. They seem as though they adore each other, and Aaron is quite content to sit back and watch, because Hamilton deserves to be happy, and so does the middle Schuyler. And if they find it with each other, so be it.

*

He attends their wedding and offers his advice and hopes for their future.

At the end of it all, he finds Angelica gagging on an azalea and crying.

*

It doesn't get better, not for him or Laurens or Angelica. The three of them talk often, bonding over the fact that they love Hamilton, Hamilton doesn't love them, and they wake up to the feeling of flowers in their throats every day because Alexander loves another.

*

It hits them all hard when Laurens is shot.

*

Burr and Angelica stop talking.

*

His condition worsens and Aaron finds himself unable to sleep, or think straight because he can't breathe and no one seems to notice at all, except maybe Theodosia, who he's fallen out of touch with because she was just too perfect and he couldn't fall in love with her, not when she's married and Burr is too wrapped up in the mess of feeling he has already. And he doesn't know if he could take any more petals clogging his throat than the ones already there.

*

It happens eventually.

He's simply walking to Alexander's office. They work next door, it's not hard. Burr is only walking, and then suddenly he feels it, and knows that this it it, it's the end, because he can't breathe, and the flowers aren't just petals anymore, they're full blossoms, blocking his throat and cutting off air. And he's choking now, gagging and sputtering on Alexander doorstep, when did he get there? His vision is going blurry and he collapses to his knees. And for once he doesn't feel sorry for Laurens, who died so young and so needlessly. At least he didn't have to suffer the agony of this.

He feels blood, thick and hot, but he can't think, can't breathe, and he goes limp, fighting for one last breath before he goes cold and Aaron Burr is gone.

*

Alexander finds him, dead, with asphodel flowers in his mouth.

*

_My regrets follow you to the grave._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
